The wrench slipped, and Marco Venturi's knuckles scraped against the engine block for the third time that morning. He swore under his breath, sucking at the fresh cut while his other hand remained buried in the guts of the ancient Fiat 500.
"Language, Marco," his father called from across the garage without looking up from the carburetor he was rebuilding. Giuseppe Venturi had ears like a hawk, even at fifty-three, even with decades of unmuffled engines having done their damage.
"Sorry, Papa."
The garage smelled like it always did—motor oil, rust, and the faint sweetness of antifreeze that had seeped into the concrete floor over the years. Three cars in various states of disassembly crowded the space: the Fiat, a Lancia that had been there so long Marco couldn't remember it arriving, and Signora Benedetti's Panda that she'd brought in yesterday with a grinding noise she swore sounded like "a dying cat, but worse."
Marco extracted his hand and examined the bolt he'd finally freed. Stripped threads. Of course. He glanced at the clock on the wall—the one that had been running fifteen minutes slow for as long as he could remember, the one his father refused to fix because "if you know it's wrong, then you know the right time, no?"
If the clock said 11:30, that meant it was really 11:45. The karting track in Montebello would be opening in fifteen minutes.
"Papa, I was thinking—"
"No."
Marco hadn't even finished the sentence. He set down the wrench with deliberate care, fighting the familiar frustration that rose in his chest like steam in a radiator. "You don't know what I was going to say."
"You were going to ask about the track." Giuseppe still didn't look up. His hands moved with practiced efficiency, removing the float bowl, inspecting the jets. "The answer is no. We have work."
"We always have work."
"Yes. That's how we eat."
Marco returned to the Fiat, but his hands moved automatically now, his mind elsewhere. Through the open garage door, he could see the mountains that ringed their small town of Castellana. The road that wound up and over the pass to Montebello was visible from here, a gray ribbon against green hills. On Saturdays, if the wind was right, you could hear the high-pitched scream of kart engines echoing across the valley.
Today the wind was right.
He tried to focus on the work. The Fiat needed a new oil pan gasket, spark plugs, and probably a timing belt if the owner wanted it to survive another winter. But his fingers felt clumsy, his usual rhythm broken by the sound that carried on the breeze—faint, distant, but unmistakable. The sound of speed.
"You know," Giuseppe said, and something in his tone made Marco look up. His father had set down his tools and was watching him with an expression Marco couldn't quite read. "When I was young, I thought I could fix anything. Cars, trucks, even a tractor once. Thought if I worked hard enough, learned enough, I could build something. Not just fix broken things, but create something new."
Marco waited. His father rarely spoke about the past.
"I was good with my hands, just like you. Maybe better." Giuseppe wiped his palms on a rag, a gesture Marco had seen ten thousand times. "But being good at something and making a living at it—those are different things. And they're both different from making it a life."
"Papa—"
"Let me finish." Giuseppe's voice was gentle but firm. "Your uncle Stefano, you remember him?"
Marco nodded. Uncle Stefano appeared in family stories but never at family dinners. The name carried weight, the kind that made his mother purse her lips and change the subject.
"Stefano loved racing. Karts, motorcycles, anything with an engine. He was good, too. Really good." Giuseppe picked up a screwdriver, turned it in his hands. "He spent every lira chasing that dream. Borrowed money, made promises, kept saying the big break was coming. It never came. He died at thirty-eight, broke and bitter, in a hospital bed after a crash at some amateur race that paid nothing and meant nothing."
The garage fell silent except for the distant whine of kart engines.
"I'm not Uncle Stefano," Marco said quietly.
"No. You're smarter than he was. More disciplined." Giuseppe met his eyes. "That's why I worry more."
Marco wanted to argue, to push back, to say that this was different, that he was different. But he'd learned years ago that arguing with his father was like arguing with a stone wall—technically possible, ultimately pointless.
Instead, he returned to the Fiat, and they worked in silence as the morning stretched toward afternoon. The sound of the karts faded as the wind shifted. By the time they broke for lunch—bread, salami, cheese, the same as always—the track would be full of drivers, and Marco would be here, smelling like motor oil and yesterday's regrets.
His phone buzzed. A message from Luca: Dude where are you? Got a free session. Your kart is literally just sitting here.
Marco typed back: Can't make it. Working.
Three dots appeared, then: Your life is so sad it makes me want to cry. Actually cry. With tears.
Despite everything, Marco smiled. Luca had been his best friend since they were six, had gotten him into karting in the first place, had a father who actually encouraged racing instead of treating it like a dangerous delusion.
Another message: Serious though, championship qualifying is in two weeks. You need practice.
Marco glanced at his father, who was examining the newspaper while he ate, reading glasses perched on his nose. Giuseppe Venturi, who had built this garage from nothing, who worked twelve-hour days six days a week, who had never taken a vacation Marco could remember. Who had raised him alone after Marco's mother died when he was seven, who had taught him everything he knew about engines and nothing about dreams.
I know, Marco typed back. I'll figure something out.
But as he set down his phone and picked up his sandwich, he wondered if that was true. The regional karting championship started in two weeks. He'd scraped together enough money for entry fees by doing odd jobs around town, but practice time cost money he didn't have, and his father's permission was something he couldn't buy at any price.
Through the garage door, a red Ferrari drove past on the main road—probably a tourist heading to Lake Como. Marco watched it disappear, the sound of its engine a beautiful, mocking roar that faded into the ordinary noise of Saturday afternoon in a small town where nothing ever happened and nothing ever would.
Giuseppe cleared his throat. "The Benedetti Panda. I want you to diagnose the grinding noise."
Marco nodded and stood, brushing crumbs from his coveralls. Work. Always work.
But as he approached Signora Benedetti's car, his mind was on a different machine—a beaten-up rental kart with a temperamental engine and worn tires, sitting in a garage twenty kilometers away, waiting for a driver who might never come.
He jacked up the Panda and crawled underneath with a flashlight. The grinding was obvious within seconds—a failing wheel bearing on the front left. Simple fix, standard part, maybe an hour of labor.
He could do this job in his sleep.
That was the problem.
Marco lay on the creeper board, staring up at the underside of the car, and for just a moment let himself imagine a different view—the underside of a Formula 1 car, carbon fiber and aerodynamics and engineering that pushed the absolute limits of what was possible. He imagined hands that built for speed instead of just fixing what was broken. He imagined a life that felt like acceleration instead of idle.
Then he slid out, grabbed his tool, and got to work.
Because this was reality, and reality didn't care about the dreams of a mechanic's son in a town nobody had heard of, working in a garage that barely broke even, with talent nobody had seen and potential nobody would ever know about.
The wheel bearing came off with a fight, because everything always came off with a fight. Marco's hands moved automatically, muscle memory from a thousand similar repairs. But his mind stayed on that track in Montebello, on the qualifying session two weeks away, on the question that haunted every quiet moment: what if?
Outside, another car drove past. Not a Ferrari this time, just someone's Volkswagen, going somewhere, going anywhere.
Marco tightened the final bolt on the new bearing and wondered what it would take to be the one leaving instead of the one left behind.